ABSTRACT
The Caspian Sea is the largest inland water body in the world, located at the boundary of Europe and Asia. The Caspian has become more obviously of international concern and the situation has been exacerbated by successful large-scale prospecting for oil and natural gas. If the Caspian is a sea, then delimitation can be carried out according to the procedures established by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Caspian Basin is also the meeting place of the major northsouth route through the Caucasus and the eastwest route linking Central Asia and Europe. Any routes through Iran are not favoured by the USA, while Turkey is anxious to maintain a reasonable limit to traffic through the Turkish Straits. The West region might be drawn into a complex web of ethnic conflicts in what has been characterised as the Eurasian Balkans.
